Bounties are time consuming as well and the legendary rate is poor. By closing the rift earlier you are effectively decreasing your playtime ratio of rift:bounty. That has an impact on your overall legendary drop rate as well.

Firebird is generally pretty boring, but as far as higher tier GR go and pushing the leaderboard it actually requires a great amount of skill and tactical gameplay. On that front I really enjoy it. I think Blizzard really put itself in a box with the mechanic though, because the damage output is so consistent that you basically just cast fire on everything and let things burn until death. It's really hard to offer styles of play that can be as competitively consistent.

My hope is that whoever is responsible for balancing the Wizard class will really take a look at Delseres, Vyrs, and Tal Rashas to really hone in and offer four uniquely different yet balanced levels of gameplay. Find a way to make it so that no set really outshines the other and start with Firebird as a base. Once you hone in on that, then maybe branch further out with newer sets and balancing some legendaries in the mix.

The Tal's suggestion in the post above mine seems like a no brainer. All elemental damage should equal your highest. That alone would go a huge way to improve the set. Also, no meteor casts on breakable objects.

I think it's hard to know if it will be better than firebird without play testing it. But, it looks pretty awesome. It's just a fresh new style of gameplay that will bring something new to the table.

My hope is that Delsere will not under-perform or out-perform firebirds, but be in line with it. What we want is equal, but different. If they can perfectly balance the two sets to reach about the same tier of GRs, then they will have a base to bring the other two sets in line with it. This is how they should be tweaking all sets to be this way. Different playstyles, all around the same level of power.

I've got my boss Gesture of Orpheus ready, although it won't be ancient.

They said from the start they were going to use greater rifts to help test class balancing, by seeing which classes were outperforming others. Now, it's just a pylon gambling exercise. Why can't climbing the greater rifts be a test of skill instead of a test of luck with pylons? I just don't get it in any respect at all. It's a complete insult on the concept of testing your own character's personal power and an insult to the integrity of the leaderboards.

To me, regular rifts should be carefree and random. Greater rifts should be as consistent, non-random, and competitive as possible. You've got the best of both worlds and you can choose which exercise you want to devote your time to. If you don't center your design philosophy around it this way, why even bother with greater rifts at all? As greater rifts stand right now they don't test the boundaries of my character, because I only reach the highest tiers by abusing conduit pylons which have no bearing on personal character strength or diligent, effective, skillful and efficient combat tactics.

By adding more pylons all you've done is created a shift where my best possible clear was the greater rift where I got one or two conduit pylons to instead having my best greater rift be the one where I got three of four. Why can't we have our best possible clears be centered around the greater rift where I utilized my skills and items to their peak efficiency and skillfully cleared the rift effectively? This is what the players want pretty much all across the board.

I like this idea except for weapons, primarily concerning weapon damage. I think on weapons it is horrible for it to include weapon damage. It's too drastic of a change to go from a legendary weapon to an ancient weapon solely because of weapon damage. From a competitive standpoint there's already a big enough gap between those who have found a furnace and those who haven't, but at least there is still a big enough pool of people who have found one to make it reasonable. But to the select few who find an ancient Furnace with 4000 weapon damage? From a competitive standpoint I feel that they will be in a tier on their own that will be nearly untouchable. Finding and replacing an ancient Taskers, an ancient marauder set piece, or an ancient firebird piece, will not have this effect; but I feel ancient weapons will be in a class of their own far outpacing their legendary counterparts to a degree that is too powerful.

I will tell you now though. From a personal standpoint, all I am going to want is ancient versions of the top end build items I already have. I am not going to start using a Smoldering Core or a Dark Knight Cape just because I find an ancient one. I will just keep hunting for that ancient Furnace, Serpent Sparker, Etrayu, etc. because those are the top end builds.

...You are going to need to bring about more build variety by properly balancing legendary affixes to accomplish that.

Finally found a good sunkeeper and was finally able to break into GR42!! Rank 6 America.Once I was able to farm 42 stones on my DH I was able to get a lot of practice and once the stars aligned it really paid off. Being able to use 10 keystones in a row really gets you into a groove, and I think it makes a HUGE impact on success rate.

Kind of sad I had to abandon my serpent sparker, but thems the breaks. I feel like the only way I could manage that is to find a good TnT and a useable cindercoat with hydra damage. My DH found a trifecta TnT with 50% attack speed, and it is hard to complain about that but was really hoping I'd land that on INT for wizard.

Now I have to find a way to beat 43...

Should I be using a witching hour instead at that point? Used SoE up until now, and I feel the mitigation is useful but it is really hard to tell. I guess I'll have to experiment with it more.

I love it; although I wish the mitigation % was not on the lower part of the roll. The only amulet I would consider replacing it with is xephirian (and even then not so sure), but the four I have found always roll really bad... like no CD/CC/socket. None. Ever. Not sure why that amulet is always so terrible. I would not trade it for Cameo. The damage mitigation from range is just too good. This is especially true since thunderstorm and jailer are both ranged affixes too, so they are mitigated as well.

The one affix that really bothers me is that frozen orb, because if I don't react fast enough or my teleport is on cooldown it could hit me twice which is certain death. Grrrr. That thing irritates me far more than jailer. At least Jailer is once then done and you can heal it off most times.

Best rift completion so far is 41 (currently rank 30). If I ever get to rift 43 and beyond, which is highly unlikely, my tune could change.

Finally broke through and finished tier 41 today with a serpent sparker and blazing hydra. Tried 42 for the first time and was pretty overwhelmed. Gonna need some more practice and good RNG to finish that one. Not really sure what else I can do gear wise except get some good T&T and level them paragons. Found two T&Ts but both were trash unfortunately.

Chose Loot 1.5 as it's the only actually cool thing that completely separates the console from the PC version in what the game is primarily about: LOOT! There are other minor things, such as dodging but those things are not revolutionary to the game like how an entire new loot function has been. A lot of the other options were either available for PC in their own way (such as "offline mode" - I could just create games and never play with anyone else) or they are coming soon to PC anyways (such as no AH).

Why do they have to make paragon account wide? Why not just make the highest MF/GF bonus of the entire account apply to all characters.

If they made no changes to paragon then that would be fine. But:

There are talks about making Paragon levels account-wide, so that you don't feel like you're losing experience while playing your Paragon 100 character. Also potentially adding customization like stat allocation to it
If additions to the Paragon system are made, people that already have the required Paragon level will get the rewards on patch day

If you get extra bonuses like stats or even in game perks, then you'd be back to feeling like you're playing the game wrong by not being on your highest paragon.

No, it's separate character development.

For instance I have a level 100 paragon wizard, but right now I am playing my DH and she is paragon 41. I don't feel gimped in power by playing my 41 DH because I know I need to progress her separately and get her just as strong. To me, it's no different than having a level 60 monk and a level 30 wizard. The only way I have felt hindered on her is by losing the 300 MF/GF that my wizard has at level 100. I enjoyed starting her at level 60 no paragon and watching her progress to 41 and I will enjoy progressing her to paragon 100. I don't want her to just automatically be 100 and have nothing to do on her and lose any sense of progression. I want her to gain exp and actually play her and power her up, even if just a minimal amount per level. The reason I don't play my wizard anymore is because I don't gain experience so I don't really feel a sense of progression, all I do is play item lottery by killing monsters which isn't that fun lately because if I spend 4 hours farming and gain nothing I don't even have paragon level progression to feel I did something worthwhile. We shouldn't be striving for less things to do, but more things, and making paragon completely account bound would do just that.

What I would really like to see is have an insane paragon level cap (or another champion system with 100 extremely difficult levels that take thousands of hours to progress through), and you gain absolutely no benefits, it's strictly just for bragging rights and showing how long you have played your character in comparison to others. So at least you are progressing in some way at all times, even if just for vanity.

To be clear, in case there are any misunderstandings my stance would be to have any perks that don't affect character strength (MF, GF, vanity items) should be account-wide based on the highest paragon level and any character development progression should be based on that specific character's personal paragon level (stat points, paragon skills).